A lifelog camera is a camera device that is typically worn by a user and used to capture photos that serve a photographic memory of events occurring near the user. Conventional lifelog cameras are configured to capture images on a timed basis. In some devices, for example, an image is captured every 30 seconds. If left to take pictures over the course of several hours or an entire day, the lifelog camera could take hundreds or thousands of pictures at the predetermined time intervals. Under this approach, many of the images captured by conventional lifelog cameras are not very interesting. Therefore, a lifelog camera's memory may become filled with photos that are not of interest to the user. More compelling moments may occur rather quickly and between the timed increments for taking a photo. However, it is difficult to determine when those compelling moments are occurring.
One proposed way to increase the appeal of stored images is to evaluate the photos for visual content that is worth retaining, such as images containing people or certain types of objects. The rest of the images may be deleted. An issue with this approach is that the approach is processor intensive and consumes power that reduces battery life.
Another proposed technique is to synchronize the taking of photos to the location of the device, such as locations predetermined to have interest or locations to which the user has not travelled before. But this makes assumptions about locations that may not lead to an interesting depiction of the user's life events. That is, in this approach, the resulting images may not fully “tell” the user's story. Also, some new locations (e.g., a parking lot) may be rather mundane.
Another approach is to reduce the time interval between capturing photos, but this leads to capturing too much data and at the wrong occasions. Taking large numbers of uninteresting photos may be annoying to the user, and consumes battery life and data storage space.